Penang, Chinatown, first visit

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Today, we are visiting Chinatown, the real part. Until now, we stayed around the backpacker area. It is still in chinatown but on its edge. All the price are quite high but if you walk 5 minutes to the east side and follow the tourists, you will discover this old area with lots of souvenir shops, bicycles to rent, ice cream to eat and street art.

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Let’s come back to this morning. That’s the spot where I’m sleeping since few nights now. As you can see, the area is perfect for camping and it’s a dead end, even better :-)

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Building Penang style.

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Aaah, water :-)

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Zoom

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Zoom zoom

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A moment later, I’m now back to the city centre waiting for Stephane to arrive. This picture is taken from a shopping mall. Chinatown is on the right hand side.


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Here we are, in Chinatown, few hours later when the lights are soft enough to take nice pictures. Well, I’ll try ;-)

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Mouhhahaa, This is called “Fat bikes”. This type of bike has been invented to ride in snow, mud and rocky paths. In Malaysia, these bike are mainly use for rent so any one can try (which is good). Malaysian girls on Fat bikes, that’s stylish isn’t it?

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We parked the bicycles and are now walking around.

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The architecture of the area is very nice.

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We are obviously at the edge of Chinatown.

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Chinese design.

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A street, just basic.

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Colourful.

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That’s street art. All around the city centre, we can find these creations. That’s actually a flat metal sculpture laying 10cm against the wall. Unfortunately the wall is dirty now. Sometimes it’s hard to understand the “draw”.

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Another building.

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This door is very nice! Very clean.

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A temple entrance.

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That place has a lot of bicycles for rent including these Fat bikes. The decoration is also very focused on bicycles and other “old school” objects.

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That’s another temple, but from the outside, street side.

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This street art is the most famous one in Penang. This bicycle is fixed on the wall. People queue to take a picture. The street art in Penang started in 2012, for the “Penang Georgetown Festival“. Artists like Ernest Zacharevic (from Lutiania) painted these murals all around the historical centre. Since then, many others pieces were added.

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Nope, no street art here. This one shows the typical footpath in Penang and Malaysia in general.

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I’m not sure but this guy needs a pump his tires don’t you think? Come one! push man!

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This shop is closed but its front side looks cool.

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Some other Penang buildings.

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Sunset.

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Oups! This must be painful.

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A secondary street.

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Yes, that’s the Owl Shop :-)

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Meou!

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We walk around, coming back to the same road again. The colours have changed, the lights are switched on.

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There is many Chinese temple in Chinatown, like one for 50 houses!

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Same temple but from a different angle.

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These “taxi bikes” are much more authentic than the ones in Melaka. Maybe They wanted to be different but Penang bike style are much better.

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The same shop where we can rent bicycles.

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A clock and a bike.

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Temple view.

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The version two.

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Same temple again.

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A fence somewhere nearby.

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Finally, that’s another street art. I did not take all of them because there is always too many people around taking the exact same picture. This place is quiet now but for how long?

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Hehe, not for long :-)

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This is very well done!

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Wow! That what we call here a huge asian food court. All around this is different shop that sell a specific kind of food. We walk around, choose what we want and somebody will find us to bring what we have order. They must have a good visual memory. For the drinks, this is on the right hand side :-) 2.80 Ringgit for a drink and 5 to 25 ringgit for a meal. That’s a good choice for any price we want.

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Tonight it’s sushi. That’s such a long time I did not have some. Delicious! see ya!

2 thoughts on “Penang, Chinatown, first visit

  1. Super l’art de rue, entre sculptures et trompe l’oeil. En fait heureusement que tu as précisé car je n’avais pas compris qu’il y avait une sculpture, je pensais que c’était dessiné. Original !

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